It was a fitting conclusion to the story. Wow, what a great character Boyd was. Raylan too, but Walton Goggins just knocked it out of the park.
And,
re: a certain article of clothing
what was up with the yellow something on the right front of the brim of the ill-fated Boon’s hat (it was his hat, right)? Was it some bling or other, or a result of the shootout?
A consistently fun, entertaining and well written show. I’m going to miss it. I thought the ending was just about perfect.
While I loved parts of this season, I definitely felt like the last few episodes had moments where pieces were just getting jammed into place regardless of pacing or logic so that certain moments could arrive. I liked the idea of Raylan trying to bait Boyd into getting killed and Boyd saying “nah.” It worked once in Miami, glad Boyd was smarter than that. But getting Boyd to that show down when he was last seen 80 feet from swarms of FBI, dogs, and a chopper hurling dynamite seems beyond implausible.
So in the end, I don’t think it was even that important for Raylan to have been the one to literally arrest Boyd. I feel like any one of the main characters taking Boyd in would have been satisfying (Art, Tim, Rachel - all would have worked). I would have rather seen Raylan take out Sam Elliot and crew to rescue Eva. They’ve had this simmering respect all season but Eva would be the impasse. I wanted something very different than the shoot out with Boon (although that actor was great as he was in Hannibal playing a different sort of creepy killer). Remember when Raylan was told to grab a gun on the table with the guy waiting to knife the outstretched hand? Remember how Raylan just pulled the tablecloth? Remember when Raylan finally faced off against the 20-foot rule guy? Remember Omar’s fate in The Wire? There were a lot of surprising ways that Boon confrontation could have gone down and I felt like it went with the most basic. Raylan is fast but that’s not really the way he, or the show, deals with stuff a lot of the time. Personally I would have loved to see Boon get run over by the girl in the car that Boon had his back turned while Raylan talked him into distraction since Boon seemed to have a fascination with Raylan.
I liked how Eva turned out, I liked that Raylan and his ex wife don’t end up happily ever after given their history. And I really loved that ending conversation between Boyd and Raylan. That was an awesome final line (as was Raylan’s response when Art said he still doesn’t see what Winona sees in Raylan). Out of curiosity, do you think Raylan was really there for the reason he states in that final line? Obviously coming in person helps reinforce the lie, does that final line also help reinforce the lie or do you think that sentiment was true even though coming in person was so loaded a gesture?
I’d be interested to see Amazon’s sales spike for “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” after last night’s episode. I bought a copy and started reading it last night.
Gonna miss this show, such great characters and writing. Crazy to think that Boyd was only supposed to be a one off character for the pilot.
I don’t think there are strong enough words for me to express how much I disagree with this.
I think I would double down on not caring if Raylan arrested Boyd if Raylan had to make the choice to go save Eva instead. An understanding that an obsession had formed and it was time to let it go since it was getting done and that’s the main point. How they actually executed forcing the moment to come together so Raylan actually did the arresting might be part of my feelings here since I thought it was weak. Maybe done better I would have cared more (although I never felt any tension that Raylan was about to shoot Boyd… it felt obvious that Boyd would just say nah).
There were some ho-hum seasons, but I’m going to miss this show.
I got to see this at the Drafthouse with a bunch of other fans. The tension, and gasps during a certain scene, were something else when watching with a crowd.
That finale was amazingly satisfying, especially the chat at the end. Damn I’m gonna miss this show.
Now I either want a Tim or Wynn spinoff. MAKE IT HAPPEN FX.
I’d pay good money for Tim/Rachel/Art/Wynn spinoff.
Man, I’m really gonna miss this show. So many great characters and memorable scenes. Props to writers…and everyone involved, really.
On the AVClub’s write-ups for this show, they talked about the hierarchy of bad guys/cops, and how Raylan could be the only one to take down Boyd because Boyd was at the top of the criminal food chain. Anyone could take out Markham, really, because he was (in the end) the typical Elmore Leonard bad guy who thought he was smarter than he was and whose greed/ambition/desire for revenge/stupidity caused him to overextend. Compare him to Wynn Duffy, whose own greed or desire/need to revenge was always lower than his keen sense of self preservation. Wynn Duffy can’t be killed by conventional weapons, while Markham, like Boone, died ignobly.
(Though both did better than the Crowe brother last season who fell into a hole and stabbed himself. Now that’s an Elmore “criminals are stupid, that’s why they’re criminals” Leonard death scene.)
Ha! I also bought it today. Waiting for it to come in the mail.
Regarding Raylan’s new hat, which I also hated, that was a tip of the hat to Leonard who hated the hat they gave Raylan in the series because it was a cowboy hat and why is Raylan wearing a cowboy hate in Harlan County. (Well, for obvious metaphoric reasons but it was the one thing that Leonard disagree with.) The hat Raylan wears at the end is what Leonard described him as wearing in Fire in The Hole.
I thought this was a fantastic ending, particularly the epilogues. There were so many great call backs to the shows beginnings – Raylan attempting to set up a Tommy Bucks like confrontation and Boyd being to smart to take the bait; Wynona telling Raylan he’s the most stubborn man she knows and him coming back, “Well, that’s better than being the angriest, right?”; And finally, that last line about Boyd and Raylan digging coal together which, in the end, ties up the whole series as an extended version of the original short story that inspired it.
I read an interview with Graham Yost that explained it, and while I still hate the article of clothing as presented, it makes perfect sense now. After sleeping on it, I agree with you re: the callbacks and the finale as a whole: It’s a great ending. The acting and character moments at the end of the finale, another callback, really sticks with me.
I want to go back and watch Seasons 5 and 6 now but I am “afeared” that Season 5’s Ava in Prison will be matched by Season 6’s “Ava as Informant” and “Loretta in Peril”.
It’s definitely one of my favorite shows of all time.
Loved the show overall, but they basically turned Boyd into a psychopathic killer in the last two episodes. I mean the guy would definitely be in Federal supermax prison for the, what, five or so murders over the previous 24-48 hours.
But the end was good. I hope to see more of the various actors soon.
I think the parts of season five which didn’t work (basically Ava and Boyd’s stories) were setting pieces in motion for the final season. It’s easy to see that in retrospect but I don’t think it makes those arcs any less weak in the context of season five and in contrast to the Crowe story line which I actually liked.
As for Boyd being a psychopathic killer, I think he was pretty ruthless and willing to kill to further his ends throughout the series but these tendencies ratcheted up as he got backed into a corner. Once he decided he was going to cut and run, he no longer needed the pieces of the criminal empire he had been attempting to build.
I really liked the ending, but man… Markum just got wrecked. He seemed so badass, but really was just all talk.
Over the course of the series I started off with Raylan being my favorite character, but it turned out to be Boyd in the end who I really liked.
Spoilers below!
So question… Did Raylan hit Boone first? Causing Boone to jerk his gun up a bit, thus missing a proper headshot?
Boone Spoilers
I think Boone missed the shot simply because Raylan’s hat is so goddamn big and worn high. See the discussion about the hat and Elmore Leonard above.
Elmore Leonard on The Friends of Eddie Coyle:
In the winter of 1972 my agent at the time, H. N. Swanson in Hollywood, called to ask if I’d read a recently published novel called THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE. I told him I hadn’t heard of it and he said, “This is your kind of stuff, kiddo, run out and get it before you write another word.” Swanie was a legend in the movie business having represented F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain. I did what I was told, bought the book, opened to the first page and read: “Jackie Brown at twenty-six, with no expression on his face, said that he could get some guns.”
I finished the book in one sitting and felt as if I’d been set free. So this is how you do it.
The reviews were all raves. Joe McGinnes in THE NEW YORK TIMES said that George Higgins has “given us the most penetrating glimpse yet into what seems the real world of crime – a world of stale beer smells . . . and pale unnourished little men who do what they have to do to get along.”
Walter Clemons in NEWSWEEK said EDDIE COYLE “isn’t a thriller (though it is – stunningly – that) so much as a highly specialized novel of manners.”
The review in THE NEW YORKER nailed it in the opening paragraph by listing these friends of Coyle – the man himself described as “a small fish in the Boston underworld” – the bank robbers Jimmy Scalisi and Artie Valantropo; the gun dealer Jackie Brown; Dillon the bartender, a character to keep your eye on; and a dealing T-man, Dave Foley. They’re the book. They reveal themselves not only by what they do, but also by the way they speak, their sounds establishing the attitude or style of the writing.
To me it was a revelation.
I was already writing in scenes, trying to move my plots with dialogue while keeping the voices relatively flat, understated. What I learned from George Higgins was to relax, not be so rigid in trying to make the prose sound like writing, to be more aware of rhythms of coarse speech and the use of obscenities. Most of all, George Higgins showed me how to get into scenes without wasting time, without setting up the scene, where the characters are and what they look like. In other words, hook the reader right away. I also realized that criminals can appear to be ordinary people and have some of the same concerns as the rest of us.
George Higgins learned all this on his own. He majored in English at Boston College, which was my major at the University of Detroit, another Jesuit school. Higgins went on to Stanford, he said “to learn how to write fiction,” which he found out “can’t be taught, but I didn’t know that then.” I left school to write Chevrolet ads and also failed to learn anything about writing. Higgins joined the Associated Press as a rewrite man, a step in the right direction referred to as “like toilet training.” He returned to Boston College for a law degree, got a jog as an assistant U.S. Attorney and loved it, meeting a parade of characters he would soon be using in his novels.
Still, getting published was tough. Along the way from Stanford to EDDIE COYLE, Higgins wrote as many as ten books that he either discarded or were rejected by publishers – perhaps for the same reason my first novel with a contemporary setting, THE BIG BOUNCE, was rejected by publishers and film producers eighty-four times in all, editors calling the book a “downer,” void of sympathetic characters – the same ones I’m writing about thirty years later. Higgin’s agent at the time of EDDIE COYLE read the manuscript, told him it was unsalable and dropped him. Let this be an inspiration to beginning writers discouraged by one rejection after another. If you believe you know what you’re doing, you have to give publishers time to catch up and catch on.
In the beginning, both Higgins and I had to put up with labels applied to our work, critics calling us the second coming of Raymond Chandler. At the time we first met, at the Harbourfront Reading in Toronto, George and I agreed that neither of us had come out of the Hammett-Chandler school of crime writing. My take on THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE, for example – which I’ve listed a number of times as the best crime novel ever written – makes THE MALTESE FALCON read like Nancy Drew. Our method in telling stories has always been grounded in authenticity based on background data, the way it is as well as the way such people speak. We also agreed that it’s best not to think too much about plot and begin to stew over where the story is going. Instead, rely on the characters to show you the way.
Five years after EDDIE COYLE, a NEW YORK TIMES review of one of my books said that I “often cannot resist a set piece – a lowbrow aria with a crazy kind of scatological poetry of its own – in the Higgins manner.” And that’s how you learn, by imitating.
Higgins has been called the Balzac of Boston while I’ve been labeled the Dickens of Detroit. We didn’t discuss it, so I’m not sure what George thought of his alliterative tag. What I wonder is who I’d be if I lived in Chicago.
George V. Higgins died on November 7, 1999, only days short of his sixtieth birthday. During the past twenty years or so his name and mine have appeared together in the press – often in the same sentence – some 178 times. I’m honored.
More Boone Spoilers
Also remember Boone’s comment about always looking for the head shot because you never know when the pussy you’re facing might be wearing body armor.
Arise thread!!
Hey, I hope y’all don’t mind me resurrecting this thread, but I could use some advice. I finally was able to snag the complete series blu ray, and I wanna do a rewatch. I’ve tried to get the fiance into it by showing her the pilot, but she wasn’t super keen on it. I was therefore thinking of starting her next with the season 1 episode, “Long in the Tooth”, which is about chasing the fugitive dentist played by Alan Ruck. I was then gonna go back to episode 2 and move on from there.
However, if y’all know of a better way to try and get her into the show, I’m all ears. Thanks y’all!
It largely depends on what didn’t click for her. What didn’t she like? Because to me (iirc) the pilot was damned amazing and fairly representative of what the show remained, though the stories and characters grew more complex of course.